Begging
by Manic Penguin
Summary: Sam's extended POV of the events of Transition.


_**BEGGING**_

**RATING: PG  
SUMMERY: Sam's POV of how he came to be Deputy Chief of Staff.  
SPOILERS: Takes place all the way through TRANSITION so major spoilers for that, and everything up to it.  
SHIP: Sam/Other, Josh/Donna  
STATUS: COMPLETE!**

* * *

_I started writing this before the episode was actually over. The ending may seem abrupt to some, and maybe it is, but I felt that it was a good place to finish off._

_Please don't find the word count daunting. Give this fic a chance._

_M_

* * *

The meeting was reaching a new level of mind numbing boredom, but I sat in my chair, always the faithful and diligent employee, and listened to the senior partners make jokes that weren't within spitting distance of being remotely funny while our clients nodded and pretended to know and care about what they were hearing. 

Sometimes I wondered why I had gone back to corporate law, why I hadn't stayed in politics or gotten a job working for the District Attorney's office after my Congressional campaign crashed and burned. I had lost my focus, my drive, somewhere along the way, and, in an attempt to find out what I wanted my life to be like, I had gone back to what I knew was the most stable option for me. I was back to paying seventeen times the average when tax season rolled around and I was, in the words of my mother, helping to make the world a little bit worse. Except that I wasn't, because I had managed to turn the firm around on a lot of things that affected real people every day.

I was brought out of his moment of silent reflection when the attention of everyone in the room turned toward the door. Rumpled suit, pale skin, dark circles that would make a raccoon jealous under his eyes, and his backpack slung over one shoulder, Josh stood before them much the same way he had nine years earlier, only this time he was dry and my leaving was not a foregone conclusion. Because I knew that was why Josh Lyman had come to California when the Transition was going full steam ahead and any number of a billion things needed to be taken care of back in DC. He wanted to pull me back into politics. Again.

"I'm sorry, can we help you?" one of the partners asked.

Turning my chair away from the door, I took a moment to collect myself. "If you'll all excuse me for a moment," I said before getting up and going over to Josh. "I thought you'd never call," I said before leading Josh to out of the conference room.

"Listen, you know why I'm here—"

"Not in here," I said, cutting Josh off. I glanced around to see if anyone was paying attention to them—my assistant had informed me that people were placing bets on how long I would stay with the firm before joining the Santos Administration, and ever since I had been a little paranoid. "Outside," I decided when I noticed that several people were watching us.

We didn't speak again until we were outside of the building. "You knew you'd hear from me," Josh said once he felt it was safe to speak again.

"Gave me time to hone my turn down," I replied.

Never one to back down from a challenge, Josh straightened his poster and hitched his backpack up a little higher on his shoulder. "That's why I didn't do it over the phone," Josh tossed back.

"Your showing up does have a nice nostalgic symmetry," I admitted. I had to at least give him that.

"Style points," Josh nodded.

"If nothing else."

"Substance, too," Josh said. "This guy's the real deal," he continued, getting to the serious part of the conversation.

Flashes of a similar conversation on a New York street corner assaulted me. "You said that last time," I pointed out.

"And look how right I was. Tell me you don't miss it."

"I don't miss it," I said, only half sure that what I was saying was the truth. Something was missing from my life, but I still wasn't quite sure what it was.

Josh rolled his eyes. Even after so much time living on opposite sides of the country—not to mention the fact that Josh had spent the last year campaigning and not returning any of my attempts at communications—Josh could still read me the same way he could back when we were starting out in the White House. "Liar," he said.

"Attorney," I corrected as we headed for a table and sat down across from each other. "Amazing thing, what you did," I said. I have always been one to give credit where credit was due, and Josh deserved to hear that what he had done was nothing short of a miracle.

"Well that's the easy part. It's what you do with it that counts," Josh said as he crossed his legs. I was, quite honestly, awed by the lack of ego in that statement.

"You know how much I'm making now?"

Josh groaned. "It's gonna make me want to puke."

"Not make you want to. You'll _actually_ puke."

"So you can afford to come back to Washington and work for a government wage," Josh said. I'm sure it was a sound argument in his head, but it lacked something when he verbalized it. He wasn't, however, wrong. It could easily go back to living on a government salary. That didn't meant I wanted to, though.

"I can afford to do good work right here. You wouldn't believe what I've gotten the firm to do—you should come work with me," I said, disregarding the fact that Josh had never actually _practised_ law, let alone the fact that I had been the first one to tell him that he wasn't a real lawyer on more than one occasion. We both knew Josh would never leave politics, that he was destined to follow in Leo's footsteps, but I wanted Josh to know that he had non-political options that would still allow him to help make the world a better place.

"Democratic House. We've never had that," Josh said, once again perfectly serious.

"Republican Senate," I shot back.

Josh wasn't deterred, not that I had expected him to be. "Moveable."

"Conceivably," I admitted. I knew that there was very little that Josh Lyman couldn't do when he set his mind to it and managed to stay focused.

"I almost lost, though. You know. You should appreciate the shot."

"I can't do it."

"It can't just be the money," Josh said.

I had to give him that. I didn't care about the money. I've never been _that_ guy. I could retire happy right now if I wanted to, though I'm not sure I'm exactly the type who retires period, let alone at the age of thirty eight. "There's my love life."

"That's a moveable feast," Josh said, rolling his eyes.

It took a lot for me to refrain from comparing 'feasts' with him—even with all the grief it caused me my one-time thing with Laurie did far less damage to the Presidency than Josh's 'relationship' with Amy Gardner. "Not entirely," I said. "I'm getting married." I had called him, or, rather, his apartment, after it became official—he's still my best friend and I will, eventually, need a best man, once the actual planning of the wedding begins—but I am not entirely sure that Josh has even been back to his apartment since the campaign started.

"Well, I've heard it before."

"Nice!"

"I mean… congratulations, is what I mean," Josh fumbled.

It was time for a little misdirection. "What about your life?" I asked. There was a pause and I rolled my eyes. "What was I thinking?"

"I've been somewhat busy," Josh said more than a little defensively. Obviously his lack of a personal life has become somewhat of a sore point for Josh. I filed that away for future reference.

"That explains the…"

Josh frowned. "The what?"

"Your general…" I trailed off, trying to be tactful in my phrasing.

"What? It's the hairline, isn't it?" Josh asked.

"It's retreated," I agreed.

Dragging his fingers through his hair Josh returned fire. "It's routed. Like Napoleon out of Moscow." The reference screamed 'Donna' but I didn't want to get tangled up in the web that is the saga of 'Josh and Donna'.

"There's also a pallor issue," I pointed out.

"You live in melanoma central. _Healthy glow_ turns out to be oxymoronic."

My little bit of misdirection had done it's job so I changed the subject back to the matter at hand because it was clear that we weren't going to get anywhere if I didn't keep us on track. "Look, I'd be glad to help out with the Inaugural speech."

"Great, but that's not what I flew out here to ask," Josh said, leaning forward the way he did before he offered up what he felt was the best deal out there. I'd seen it many times before, but I'd never had it aimed at me. "Deputy Chief of Staff. You're me to my Leo. Think about it."

"Josh…"

"At least give me that. I did—"

"Fly all the way out here?" I cut in, knowing what he was going to say. Like it was such a hard thing to do—frequent flyer miles are a part of the financial disclosure reports and, as much as I used to hate the time when the reports came out, the truth was that they were pretty entertaining when your name isn't among those featured.

"That's how much I want you. I'm willing to channel my mother."

I sighed. "I'll think about it," I conceded.

"Great," Josh said. He took a beat and then said, "You done?"

Typical. "Josh."

"What's to think about? Really?" Josh asked.

Of course, I knew that he'd ask that. Serving the President is what his life has been about since he was four. He has yet to grasp the concept that not everyone feels the same way that he does.

"For one thing, whether I want to end up looking like you," I said, hoping to throw him off his game for at least a moment. Corporate law is about semantics more than anything else. My Socratic skills have diminished somewhat since departing the political arena. I willingly admit that. I'm rusty, out of practise when it comes to the lively debate and interplay that makes up the majority of conversations within the Beltway.

"Oh, you're just full of funny," Josh said, rolling his eyes at me once again. The eye-rolling thing was yet another thing about him that screamed 'Donna'. "Think about it. You'll play a major role in policy—both foreign and domestic, or if you want you can take your pick and focus on one. You always wanted to play a bigger role in policy discussions."

This was true. I had always wished I had more of a hand in policy and that I spent less time speechwriting. I added the policy thing to the mental PRO/CON list I was formulating.

"You'll still be able to craft speeches for the President—the person I have in mind for Communications Director is more of a PR consultant than a writer—but you won't spend your life quibbling over the language in a two minute speech to a group on one has ever heard of before. Inaugural, State of the Union, maybe a few public addresses since Kazakhstan is heating up and Santos will have to address the nation at some point. You can pick and choose what you work on," Josh continued.

Also good points. Picking what speeches to work on and crafting the message that the public and Congress received without the constant worry of essentially inconsequential addresses would almost be a dream come true.

"The Council's office traditionally reports to the Chief of Staff, but, as you've pointed out a great many times before, I'm not a real lawyer, so I'll need a Deputy who actually has a background in practising law."

"Who do you have in the Council's office?" I asked. This offer was sounding more and more appealing; not that I planned on letting Josh know that.

"I'm still shopping for Chief, but I've got two Deputy Chiefs lined up as well as a handful of Associate Councils. I think I might hire a Third Deputy Chief, but, again, you take this and you can make decisions like that."

Something was starting to sound funny to me. "Why three DC's?"

Josh smirked. "The two we've got now are Republicans," he said. "Joe Quincy—the guy who outted Hoynes—and our old friend Ainsley Hayes."

This got my attention. Ainsley and I had kept in touch after I left, but time, distance, and lifestyles did what they tend to do and, other than an e-mail did what they tend to do, and other than e-mail ever so often we didn't speak anymore. "How'd you get her on board?" I asked. "Last I heard she couldn't wait to start working at the Hoover Institute."

"She went to CJ to see if she could smooth the way with me. Santos is really into bipartisanship and jumped at the chance," Josh said. "She likes Santos a lot. His ideals—some of them, at least—are close to her own a lot closer than Bartlet's ever were." Josh frowned. "Her working for the White House isn't going to be a negative on your mental list, is it?"

It's creepy how well we know each other. "Why would it?" I asked.

"Because there was something there, between you two, and then you left and now you're engaged," Josh said. At least he had the decency not to say the 'again' that I knew he wanted to add to that statement.

"Ainsley knows I'm engaged. We e-mail each other when big things happen in our lives," I said. It sounded vaguely pathetic when I said it out loud, but it was the most effective form of communication. "I don't know, however, what Sara would think about me working with Ainsley again."

"Sara being your fiancé," Josh said.

I nodded.

"If it becomes a deal breaker I can work something out," Josh said.

Groaning I sat back in my chair. "Please don't tell me you just offered to fire Ainsley to get me back to DC." Josh cringed and I shook my head. "If I were to do this, and keep in mind that this is entirely hypothetical, something like the fact that I might see someone who could possibly make my fiancé uncomfortable would not be a deal breaker, Josh. Firing someone who is incredibly qualified and did nothing to deserve it would, though. I can handle Sara. I can't handle a friend of mine losing her job because the fact that I might see her from time to time might make Sara uncomfortable."

"Duly noted," Josh nodded.

It had been a while since I disappeared from the conference room and I knew I'd have to come up with a reason for my abrupt departure so I needed to end this, despite the fact that it was really good to see Josh again. "Look, I was actually in a meeting when you got here, so I should get back to that," I said, "and I'm sure you've got a flight back to DC. You obviously know how to reach me, and I'm sure you have a card or something with your new contact information for me."

Josh handed me a card with his new numbers. "I've had five phone numbers in the last year. This one will be in effect until the Transition is over when I get my White House phone. But we'll talk again before that happens."

"I'm sure we will," I said as I tucked his card into my pocket. "It's good to see you. We really suck at keeping in touch."

"Yeah, we do," Josh agreed. "Why didn't I know you got engaged? I didn't even know you were seeing anyone that was, you know, heading toward serious, let alone ring shopping."

I smiled. "I called you a couple of times but none of your numbers were working—you should make sure you at least get a forwarding message put on after you change your number—and when I gave up trying to reach you personally I left a series of messages on your answering machine at your apartment."

"Should've called CJ," Josh said.

"She had Margaret promise to get back to me after stranding me on hold for forty minutes. It wasn't until after I'd gotten the hold music out of my head that I thought to just ask Margaret."

Josh nodded. "Kazakhstan is driving CJ up the wall. Plus everything with Toby…" he trailed off with a sigh. "Have you talked to him?"

"A few times," I nodded. "His lawyer is good, but she won't be able to save him. He's going to have to do some time, though I'm pretty sure it will be argued down to minimum security.

"I still can't believe he's willing to go to prison when he's all but guaranteed the judicial equivalent of a slap on the wrist if he just tells them it was David."

"It's Toby, Josh. He may hate his father and have less than pleasant contact with his sisters around the holidays but he and David were close. Toby would beg borrow ad steal—and, apparently, commit treason—for his baby brother. It's just who he is," I said. I couldn't fight the clenching in my heart when I inadvertently reminded myself that I had once held a coveted place as Toby Zeigler's little brother. "How did you get his help on the campaign without anyone finding out?" I asked, needing to change the subject. Josh sat up straighter, shocked. "Oh, please. You had Toby whispering plays in your ear since, when? San Andreo?"

"The VP debate," Josh said reluctantly. "How'd you know?"

"I know you, I know the average age and level of experience of your staff, and I know Toby. You had help, CJ and Will are too busy working their asses off for a lame duck administration that wants to go out with a bang, and Leo had enough going on as the bottom half of the ticket. I'm sure everyone pitched in when they could, but Toby's been doing nothing but have the same meeting over and over again since he left the White House. He was flexing his political muscles by helping you out and as your attorney I want you to realize how huge a risk you were taking. The AG finds out you two were talking and you're looking at a Supreme Court subpoena. You had code-word clearance, you probably knew about the shuttle…" I trailed off. "You weren't the one who told Toby about the military shuttle, were you?"

"No. I didn't even really know what it was until Brock published. I had clearance to know about it but I wasn't in the loop on the project. All my clearance gave me was permission to know what was going on. It didn't mean I knew what was going on, you know?" Josh said.

Understanding what he was saying, I nodded. There were a lot of things that I was cleared to know about that I wasn't in the loop for. There's so much stuff to know and deal with that anything that's not a priority is just not worth your time and energy.

Josh furrowed his brow. "You think it's possible that the Attorney General could thing I was Toby's source?"

I had to be blunt with him. We weren't two friends talking about current events. We were attorney and client and it was my job to make sure that Josh understood the possible outcome of his actions. "I think that it is a possibility."

"Well, crap," Josh said. That about summed it up, really. "Good thing I've got a six-hundred-dollar an hour lawyer on retainer," he smirked.

"You'll be getting a bill for this meeting when you get home," I said dryly. "Just be careful, Josh. I'm willing to pull your ass out of the fire but that in no way means that I'm in any way eager to do so." I stood up and smoothed down my jacket. "I'll think your offer over. Just give me some time."

"I don't exactly have an overabundance to give," Josh reminded me.

"I know," I replied. "You should get some sleep. You look like crap and I want you to be alive when I get married."

Josh groaned the groan of an exhausted and somewhat discouraged man. "No promised," he said wearily.

"You'd better promise. I don't want to have to find a new best man."

It took Josh a minute to catch on to what I was saying. "Really?" he asked, obviously touched.

"Of course. We may suck at staying in touch but you've been my best friend for twenty-nine years. There's no one else I'd want standing up there with me," I said honestly.

Josh beamed. "Thank you, Sam," he said as he stood up. "I should let you get back to your meeting." We hugged briefly then Josh bent to pick up his backpack. "Donna said to say 'hi', by the way."

"How is she?" I asked as we headed back to my building. I would never forget how supportive Donna had been of me when I told her I had promised to run for Congress. Her unwavering faith in her friends was one of the reasons that I told her before telling anyone else.

"She's good. She held me together, as always, since Lou hired her. Especially the last week or so… she's amazing."

"That she is," I agreed, steering clear of the topic of the last week or so. I was still overwhelmed with guilt over not being able to make it to Leo's funeral. "Are you ever going to make a move?" I asked. I couldn't help it. I had to know.

Josh blushed. "We're… working things out," he confessed. "Right now nothing is defined… but I want to change that sooner rather than later."

"You finally made a move! That's great," I smiled.

"Technically all moves this far have been made by Donna," Josh admitted.

I rolled my eyes. Typical Josh. "If you're half as smart as you think you are you won't let Donna get away. You don't deserve her, but if she wants to be with you do not let her slip away.

"I don't intend to," Josh said solemnly.

"Good. Give Donna a kiss for me and check your messages—there is a much more eloquent request for a best man somewhere in there," I said.

"You did pretty well just then," Josh said. He tilted his head to one side. "You do plan on actually going through with this one, right? 'Cause I was just getting into the whole 'best man' groove the last time when Lisa cut and ran. I don't want to end up collecting half finished toasts."

"You sure you want to choose this moment right here to do that?" I inquired.

Josh thought for a moment. "No, I don't think I do. Can we write that one off as exhaustion and move on?"

"As long as you swear not to make any jokes like that in your toast," I bargained. "And so help me god if the words 'call girl' are anywhere in the vicinity of your thoughts you are a dead man."

"Deal," Josh said. His phone started to ring in his pocket and my pager started to beep at my hip. "Just like old times," he smiled ruefully while digging his phone out of his pocket. I frowned, somehow less than content with the knowledge that _my_ call wouldn't relate to national security.

* * *

I worked late that night, not because I had to but because I would be taking some time off before Inauguration and I didn't want to come back to two weeks of twenty hour days trying to find the top of my desk. I knew Josh didn't have an experienced speechwriting staff and Toby couldn't write something as huge as an Inaugural Address without spending some serious quality time with the President Elect and so I wasn't terribly surprised when, fifteen minutes after he'd left my office, he called and asked if I would still be willing to help with the Inaugural Address while I thought about the Deputy Chief of Staff position. I had already blocked out three weeks with my assistant and my department head who had been reluctant to let me—he was a staunch Republican and was still smarting from the fact that his old friend, Arnold Vinick, hadn't pulled off the win that had seemed like a foregone conclusion four months ago when the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination was 'Bingo' Bob Russell.

When I got home Sara was putting cartons of Chinese in the fridge, having changed out of her work suit when she got home, as she always did, and opting for a pair of shorts and one of my Princeton tee shirts, her dark hair held in a messy knot with a yellow number two pencil.

"You missed dinner," she pouted as she began pulling things back out and setting them on the counter. "Big case?"

"No," I said, pulling a beer from the fridge. "I had… it was a weird day," I said after taking a long draw from the bottle.

"Weird how?" Sara frowned as she hopped up on the counter next to the array of food.

I handed her the bottle and she took a sip from it. She never had her own bottle of beer, but if I opened one for myself she would always take at least half. It was one of her quirks. "Josh came to see me today."

"Josh Lyman?"

"Yeah," I nodded.

"He want you to help with the Inaugural?" Sara asked. We had discussed the fact that I knew Josh would contact me somewhere along the line and she had been the one to encourage me to accept if he wanted me to help with what was arguably one of the biggest speech Santos would give in his life.

"Yeah, but that's not why he came to see me," I said as I started fixing myself a plate. I'd had a stale doughnut at the office a few hours earlier but that was hardly enough to sustain me.

Sara cocked her head to one side, her bangs skimming over her forehead playfully. "He wants you on his staff," she said. "Communications Director?"

"Deputy Chief of Staff," I said.

"Wow."

I nodded and sighed. "I told him I'd think about it. It's… this is huge."

"It is," Sara agreed. "DC is a long way from home. I'd have to take the Bar again, but I don't see myself having a problem finding another job. The Beltway is famous for the number of lawyers that inhabit it. There are a lot of really good neighbourhoods in the District. Georgetown is so beautiful, though I don't know that we could afford a place there if you go back to a government salary. Rita can do some checking; see if there are any decent places that aren't too prohibitively priced."

"You're talking like I already have my bags packed."

"Sam, if I had the chance to do something I loved the way you love politics you would pack my bags for me and put me in a taxi right away. If I understand the roles of the Senior Staff the Deputy Chief of Staff is the guy to be if you want to affect change in the government. And I know you do. You had some great ideas when you were running for Congress, and if you want to run again in a district where you're not doomed from the outset you need to get back into politics before everyone forgets who you are and what you stand for."

I frowned. We had never actually talked about my Congressional campaign before, at least not in terms of my doing a repeat performance. "I don't want to run again."

"Maybe not now, but in a few years when we're married and our lives are settled down you might feel a bit different. Josh is handing you the opportunity of a lifetime. What's to think about?"

That was a really good question, one that I needed to answer before I could come to a decision.

* * *

The phone on my desk beeped. I picked up the phone and my assistant's voice came over the line. _"Mr. Lyman for you."_

"Thank you," I said before hitting the flashing button. "Twenty-four whole hours. Way to give me some space," I said sarcastically. Honestly I hadn't been sure he would wait as long as he had. Twenty-four hours was actually quite impressive for Josh.

"_It's been twenty-eight. Give me a little credit,"_ Josh said. He was breathing a little heavy and his voice was doing the cutting in and out thing that it does when he's on the phone and walking at the same time.

"You can't count the different time zones," I said rolling my eyes.

"_Whatever. It's Transition. These are like dog hours. A day is like one of your human weeks,"_ Josh said impatiently.

"That's quite a selling point," I said dryly.

Josh changed conversations without registering that I had spoken. _"So I've been thinking about this. So you're engaged. People do this and have marriages."_

I put Josh on speaker and went to make myself a cup of coffee. "Yeah? Who?" Lisa and I didn't make it to the alter. Jenny and Leo's marriage imploded. Toby and Andie got divorced before they started hating each other but they were lucky. Even President and Dr. Bartlet ended up separated for a while—though very few people actually knew why Dr. Bartlet moved back to Manchester, that's what it was: a separation.

That threw him, though only momentarily. _"You know, theoretically. She's an attorney, right?"_

"Yeah."

"_Gee, I wonder if she'll be able to find gainful employment in the lawyer capitol of the known universe,"_ Josh said.

After filling my cup I put down the coffee pot. "She'd have to take the Bar again. Would you?"

"_Well, I assume that there are a number of things that she would do for you that I would balk at,"_ Josh said, his attempt at humour falling flat.

Sighing, I picked up the phone again. "She doesn't… hate the idea," I admitted. Actually, since I had brought the subject up with Sara she had spent a lot of time talking to her friend, Rita, who was a Realtor, about the benefits of townhouses versus condos. She'd already started comparing square footage in three different places in Georgetown. She had also started updating her resume and had pulled out her old law school study guides before we went to bed. And I had only told her about the offer ten hours earlier. To say that she didn't hate the idea was a gross understatement. I was almost sure that she would end up picking up boxes and rolls of that annoying bubble-wrap crap on her way home from work.

"_I'll see you tomorrow,"_ Josh said.

Josh was obviously missing the fact that, even if Sara wasn't _against_ it, I wasn't sure I was _for_ it. "_I_ still need to think it over," I reminded my old friend.

"_Think it over on the plane,"_ Josh said. _"Not that I'm… begging,"_ he added quickly.

"I don't think you're begging."

"_Would that work?"_ Josh asked, somewhat hopefully. _"I can do begging. Humiliation is not beneath me. Just get on a plane! Nothing's irrevocable. If you hate it they have return flights. Don't make me wait; they're going… going to find me in a foetal position sucking my thumb."_

That statement would have been pathetic if I wasn't so sure it was the truth. "Okay I think we've moved into begging."

"_I told you I have no threshold of embarrassment here. I'm prepared to abase myself until you submit,"_ Josh said. _"She passed the Bar once, right?"_

"Goodbye," I said before hanging up.

I stared at the phone for a minute before picking it up again. "Tracey, I need you to book me a flight to DC, either tonight or early tomorrow morning."

"_One way?"_ my assistant, Tracey Shapiro, asked. She knew about Josh's offer and had told me, _many_ times, that I would be crazy to turn it down.

I considered that for a moment. "Open ended," I decided. "Oh, and make sure my lunch with Sara is confirmed. She and I have a lot to talk about."

"_Yes sir,"_ Tracey said. One thing I wouldn't miss about being a lawyer is the constant 'sir'-ing thing. Tracey had worked for me since I joined the firm two and a half years earlier and she still refused to call me 'Sam'. _"Do you want me to reschedule the Collins meeting?"_

"See if James or Wendy can handle it. I'm going to be taking a leave of absence for a few weeks," I said.

"_How long a leave?"_ Tracey asked, her fingers flying over her keyboard as she accessed my schedule.

I thought about it for a minute before I answered her. I already had three weeks blocked out to help write the Inaugural—well, actually, Josh had said that he would like me to _write_ the Inaugural, not _help write_ the Inaugural—but the more I thought about it the more I realized that I would probably need the entire Transition to not only craft the speech but to get the President Elect's speech patters and everything down. It was easier with Bartlet. Toby and I had worked with him on the campaign and so we'd gotten a lot of practise at writing for him. The thing that we had found the most difficult about writing Bartlet's Inaugural Address was that Toby and I had such different writing styles that it was hard to put our work together into an elegant—not to mention coherent—speech. "Eight, maybe ten weeks," I decided. If I finished with the Inaugural early I could always help out with the Transition. From what I saw when Josh came by he could use all the help he could get. "Until January twenty-fourth to be safe," I said a second later. Inauguration was January twentieth and I would probably need the other four days to recover.

Tracey was quiet for a minute and then I heard a knock at my door and she let herself in, closing the door behind her. "Why aren't you asking me to write up your resignation?" she asked bluntly. That was one thing that I loved about Tracey. She didn't beat around the bush when it came to things that mattered.

"Because I'm not sure I'm going to take the position, Trace," I said honestly.

"What did Sara say?" she asked.

"She's already started planning the move," I said with a wry chuckle.

* * *

Sara and I had lunch together two or three times a week. Sometimes I wondered if it was her way of making sure that I stopped to eat during the day, though I'd never vocalized that thought. I'm not a stupid man, after all.

Our favourite place was a little café that was conveniently ten minutes from my office and five minutes from hers. The coffee was amazing and a quarter of the price of Starbucks, the food was eclectic and delicious, and it was never too busy and loud for conversations to be held without raising your voices.

For once I was early and I was debating between the turkey salad sandwich and the vegetable gumbo when Sara sat down across from me, a file in her hand and a determined smile on her face.

"Hey," I said, lowering my menu.

"Hey," she replied before handing me the file. "Look at these."

"What am I looking at?" I asked as she opened her own menu. Sara shot me a look that clearly said 'see for yourself' and, seeing how I didn't want an argument at the moment, I did just that. After reading over the first few paragraphs I closed the file and stared at her. "Sara, seriously, how much work have you done this morning?"

"I worked, Samuel," Sara said. I cringed. She only used my full name when I was in trouble. "I had some people at the firm pull that stuff. I thought it might help you make up your mind about the Deputy Chief of Staff offer."

"Pull this from where?" I asked, ignoring her push to make a decision. I'd only been thinking about the offer for a little over twenty-four hours, after all.

Sara rolled he eyes and sighed heavily. "I called the Santos office and spoke to a woman named Donna. She seemed very eager to get you to go back to DC, by the way."

"That would be Donna Moss. She's one of my best friends," I said.

"The spokesperson," Sara said, putting it all together. When she first saw me cutting out all of Donna's clippings and taping her briefings she had teased me about having a crush on the _young blonde press secretary,_ a slightly jealous accusation that just made me laugh. "Well, anyway, I talked to her and she faxed over some of Santos' legislation that they've been keeping quiet until the first one hundred days, whatever that means."

Though she was a registered Democrat and kept a casual following of politics, Sara was hardly up on the minutiae of the political world. "The first one hundred days of a presidency are when you have the best chance of pushing legislation through Congress," I explained.

"With everything going on with Russia and China will Santos be able to do all that much, though?" Sara asked.

"Probably not," I said.

"Then won't Josh need someone like you to help him put the smack-down to Congress?" Sara asked. "You know that there are things you want to fix about this country and, as much as I love your idealism, you're not going to be able to do that by being a corporate lawyer. As Deputy Chief of Staff you'll be able to affect changes. Maybe not all the ones you want, but some, and some is better than the none you're going to get done right now, right?"

"Sara, don't try to guilt me. Please," I begged.

"I'm just saying that you'll be more powerful as Deputy Chief than you could ever hope to be as a partner in a law firm," Sara said innocently.

Unfortunately that was a fact that had been made clear to me. It seemed that every step forward that I had convinced the firm to make was suddenly so insignificant that I was questioning my decision to leave politics.

Ironically it was the same way I'd felt three years ago when I started questioning why I had left law.

Crises of faith were never fun. They're called crises for a reason, after all.

"Tracey said when she called me that you were taking some time off," Sara said.

"I promised Josh I'd help with the Inaugural Address. I'm going to have to spend some time in DC. I don't know enough about Santos to write for him," I said.

"How long?"

"I was thinking ten weeks," I said.

Sara tilted her head to the side. "Ten weeks would take you to the end of January… the Inauguration is January twentieth… so basically you're going to help Josh with the Transition," Sara said.

"I've never seen him look that bad," I said. "The combination of the campaign, the transition, and Leo… he's barely holding on by a thread. It's… honestly it's scaring me a little."

"Then you need to fly to DC as soon as you can," Sara said decisively. "I know you feel bad that you couldn't make it back for Leo's funeral. Josh needed you then, but it seems like he needs you now more than ever. And I think… I think that you need your friends right now, too. So go back to your office, get Tracey to clear your day and set your vacation time. I'll take a long lunch and go back to the apartment to pack you a bag. I'm sure you can stay with Josh or get a hotel room once you get there but if you think I should I can call ahead and book you a room somewhere, maybe close to the White House."

"The President-Elect doesn't get to set up shop in the White House until after the Inauguration. Santos will be working out of the OEOB."

Sara frowned. "The who?"

"Old Executive Office Building," I said. "And I'll figure out the lodging situation later. You're sure you think I should do this?"

"Definitely," Sara nodded. "Go. Call Tracey on your way back to the office; get her to book you a ticket. I'll bring your things by your office."

"I feel like I'm running away from something," I admitted.

Giving me a 'are you crazy?' look, Sara shook her head. "You're going to help your friends, not to mention the man who is going to be the President in a few weeks. You're not running away from anything," she assured me. "Where is the Old Executive Office Building?" she asked with a frown.

"The other side of West Executive Avenue, which is basically the White House's back alley," I said.

Sara smiled. "I love that you know these things. You're going to have to give me the insider's tour one day."

"Anytime," I promised, mentally calculating how long it would be before the cherry blossoms started to bloom.

"Good. Now go. I'll bring your back to your office for you," Sara said, giving me a little kick to get me out of my seat.

Though I'm sure that she will think I'm hyperbolizing, I have to get my main concern off my chest. "Look, Sara, Washington politics is like the mob, only the attacks and killings are much more subtle and tend to eat away at you over time, tiny cuts that never heal and hurt like hell rather than a slashed vein or artery that drains the life from you quickly. I don't know if I'm ready to go back to that life," I said honestly.

Sometimes I wondered how I had managed to fit so perfectly with someone who was so far removed from the life that kept sucking me back in no matter how many times I tried to escape. Sara knew why I had left the White House—or, rather, why I hadn't gone back—and she understood, to a degree, how the betrayal of Bartlet hiding his MS and the cruelty of professional politics had burnt me out, and I loved her for that, but there were some things that only people who had been there could possibly comprehend.

Josh, who took a bullet to the chest and, even in his pain-induced delusions, was desperate to serve at the pleasure of the President, desperate to serve Jed Bartlet and do great things with Leo McGarry.

Toby, who is perhaps the most pessimistic idealist in the world, knowing that something needs to be done and wanting so badly to do it himself but constantly finding the world to be lacking, fighting the debilitating inability to make the world turn out the way he wants it to be for his children.

Donna, who left the safety of the White House and rose through the ranks of a Presidential campaign and proved to herself that she didn't need Josh Lyman to hold her up, something that the rest of the world had known all along.

Ainsley, who worshipped, not so much the White House itself, but more the idea of the White House, since she was two and whose heart was shattered when on her first day she suffered more disappointments than she had in the twenty-odd years previous to entering the hallowed Democrat-filled halls, but whose laughter tinkled like bells when four Senior Staffers broke into her sweltering office and boisterously sang along to a Gilbert and Sullivan CD to apologize for treating her like a leper and to welcome her to the family, dysfunctional as it was.

CJ, who found love with her perfect match but was too dedicated to the job to allow herself happiness, who rails against the atrocities in the world, who still breaks down and cries over the senseless hatred half a world away, and who gave up life and love with her perfect match because she couldn't possibly do anything to stop the horrible things that happen in the world if she allowed herself the conflict-infested happiness she so richly deserves.

There are others, of course. Will and Margaret and Bonnie and Ginger, Charlie and Carol and Ed and Larry. They know the searing pain and blinding pleasure of serving at the pleasure of the President.

Someone once told me that no one understood what it was like to be a Beatle except the other Beatles. Those words stayed with me, haunting me like the words 'Bartlet for America' had haunted Leo almost ten years ago. My book, the one that I only work on about once a month, starts with those words.

"You don't have to stay," Sara said, blindingly naïve, "just help get Josh over the hump. He was supposed to be doing all this with Leo, remember? He's probably more than a little lost right now."

Though she's wrong in a lot of ways, Sara's right about one thing. Josh is wandering through the labyrinth without a light to guide him and that if he isn't careful the Minotaur will devour him whole. Donna is Ariadne to Josh's Thesus, and she will arm him with the tools he will need to come out the other side, of that I am sure. I ignore the end of the fable where Thesus abandons Ariadne because Minerva comes to him in a dream and tells him to do so. Josh may be slow on the uptake but after eight years of longing for her there is no way that he will leave Donna.

I know that Josh is floundering, and I've abandoned him too many times before to sit by and do nothing when it is quite possible that he has never needed me more. As always he dove into the situation headfirst, taking chances and asking questions later, because he knew Leo would be there to back him up. Sure Josh will have President Bartlet and CJ and a host of other experts on speed-dial, but it won't be the same and everyone knows it.

With the benefit of hindsight I can say that Josh and Leo should have considered something like this happening, but the truth is that Leo's health seemed to be better than ever since his heart attack and that tricked everyone into a false sense of security—it's only the great respect that Arnold Vinick has for Leo that has kept the Republican Party from jumping up and down saying 'I told you so' right now—and, as always, you were all caught unawares by the inevitable.

It's laughable how blind people are to what is right in front of them.

* * *

The OEOB was busier than I could remember seeing it. I was directed to Josh's office by a haggard looking intern, though I was pretty sure I could find him by following the aura of panic and stress to where it was strongest because that would be where Josh was. Right in the thick of it.

As always.

Through the window I could see Josh shaving while reading a file and perching himself on the edge of his desk. I knew that the only rest Josh was allowing himself was during cab rides to and from meetings, and even then he would be working. He was going to end up killing himself at the rate he was going.

"I may have forgotten about the hours," I said as I stopped in the doorway to Josh's office.

He actually looked shocked at my presence.

"You're here."

The truth was that I knew he wasn't.

"It would seem."

Unfortunately neither was I.

"Outstanding. Here," Josh said, picking up a pile of files off a chair and dropping them in my arms.

"Hey. Stop. Your sentimentality is embarrassing us both," I said dryly as I adjusted the large stack of files I had just been given. "When was the last time you took a vacation?" On Josh's blank look I elaborated. "Vacation. Time off from labour. Thought to be restorative; salubrious for body and soul," I said, my inner speechwriter coming to the fore the way it had a tendency to do whenever I was around anyone from the Bartlet Administration. "Not to mention mental health," I added, needing to take that little dig before moving on.

There was a moment's pause where I wasn't sure if Josh was going to faint of throw up or both. "I don't remember." I knew that, of course, but the fact that he admitted it was a testament to how he was feeling. The Josh Lyman I knew, the Josh who was at his peak, would be hiding behind humour and sarcasm. This Josh scared me.

"Okay, if I'm your boss that's really the wrong answer," I said before remembering a little fact that Sara had shared with me a few weeks earlier when I was caught up in the election. "Nerve scientists have found that when people who describe themselves as _politically committed_ listen to political statements they respond only with the emotional side of their brain. The area of the cortex where reasoning occurs stays quiet."

"So those people screaming at each other on cable really can't help it." Finally a glimpse of the Josh I was used to.

"And guys like you and me are quantifiably a little nuts. And so could benefit from the occasional break. You people don't take office for ten weeks. I think you could afford to spend one of them lying on a beach somewhere." I was very careful to say 'you people' instead of 'we'. Even if he wasn't at his best I knew that Josh would latch on to any hint of my desire to work for Santos and I would never have the choice of leaving. Josh would grab on to any chance that would stay because that would mean he had won. If there was anything that Josh Lyman loved it was winning.

Josh's phone beeped and someone let him know that he had to get to a meeting. "Yeah. Yep," he said into the phone. He hung up and looked at me as he grabbed his jacket. "I've got a thing. I've starred which are meetings, I've ex-ed out which are blow-offs."

"I haven't officially said I'm in," I reminded Josh.

"Yeah, no absolutely," Josh said before looking up and addressing the entire staff. "Ladies and gentlemen, Sam Seaborn, our new Deputy Chief of Staff." The group started applauding, somewhat half-heartedly, and Josh patted me on the back. "Knock 'em dead, tiger," he said before taking off.

At first no one really seemed to know what to do or say, which was fine because I was stuck between amusement and fury and would not have been very responsive had anyone spoken to me in the first few minutes after Josh rushed out. Josh was being Josh, I knew that, and he had skipped over that annoying first step and gone straight to the second step, the way Andie always did with Toby.

The thought of Toby brought me back. He would kick my ass back to California if he found out that such a classic Josh move had left me speechless. Of course he'd probably kick my ass across the continent if I started making a speech, too, though I know he would listen, like he always did, even if it seemed he would rather go bungee jumping or something equally anti-Toby.

"It's an honour to meet you, Mr. Seaborn," a kid in an ill-fitting blue suit and a five-dollar haircut said, his voice sounding painfully youthful. I hope to do that I didn't make Leo and President Bartlet feel so ancient nine years ago.

"Sam," I corrected. I have a feeling that I'll be having the 'we call the President &_sir_&, everyone else is _hey when am I going to get that thing I asked for_ conversation a couple of times in the near future.

The kid nodded. "The speech you wrote for President Bartlet when he spoke at the DNC fundraiser at the Capital Hilton during his second campaign… the night after the pipe bomb at Kennison State… what you wrote that night made me want to be a speechwriter."

I groaned internally. I still have nightmares about those fie days with no sleep, staffing the President, writing something Toby had been crafting for a week and had left in a soy-diesel truck somewhere during his adventure in Indiana, making sense of a senseless mass murder, and then facing Mallory, though she did make my day a little better even if I was too exhausted to really process most of what she said. Still, I'm proud of that speech. When Sara found out I had written it she told me that she had cried when she heard the President saying the words I had written in the car between the White House and the Capital Hilton. I'm proud of the speech, especially the last part—though I didn't appreciate Bruno calling me a freak—and recognition is good for the soul, at least in small doses. This hero-worship thing that the kid had going on, though… this floored me. I'm good at writing, I know this. It's not ego. I'm good, maybe one of the best writers in the country. I've written speeches and addresses for Governors, members of both houses of Congress, President Bartlet, a handful of foreign dignitaries, a few movie stars, and once, though I still don't know how I ended up involved in the situation, the King of Belgium. But I've never had someone tell me that what I wrote inspired them to do anything more than vote for what I was supporting.

Resisting the urge to ask the kid how old he had been when Bartlet gave that speech—not to mention how he found out that it had been me that wrote it and not Toby or one of the speechwriting staffers—I shook his hand and tried to understand what he said his name was and made a mental note to ask Donna for a briefing on everyone as soon as I actually saw her. It's not her job to do that anymore—well, actually, it was never her job to do that, but it was never her job to do a lot of things that she did anyway—but I'm sure she won't mind keeping me from being the idiot who calls everyone 'hey you'.

I met a few more people and a woman named Ronna pointed out the office that had a piece of paper taped to it. **_"S. Seaborn—Deputy CoS"_** was scrawled in Donna's distinctive penmanship.

"I need to stop being so damned predictable," I muttered as I set the stack of work Josh had given me down on the desk.

* * *

The morning went by relatively normally. I made the calls Josh wanted me to make and around ten I met with Lou Thorton who would be the Communications Director though, and I knew this after talking to her for two seconds, she would never speak to the press—I'd rather deal with a hundred of Josh's secret plans than one press conference led by Lou; she'd probably end up making Steve cry and I'm certain that Chris would stab Lou in the eye with her pen while Mark recorded everything on his latest Dictaphone. I had yet to see Donna, but Josh mentioned something about her being with Mrs. Santos so I didn't spend too much time looking for her; a phone call later would be fine. Ainsley stopped by and we got into a debate about something meaningless—I think we might have scared the staff a little—and we made plans to have dinner later in the week once my internal clock set itself back to East Coast time.

It wasn't until the yelling started that the day really started, though.

While watching the man that had been my best friend for almost thirty years screaming at his assistant for doing what had been asked of him I realized just how close to the edge Josh had been driven by, well, everything. I hadn't seen him this close to a total meltdown since the Christmas he put his hand through a window; though I'm sure that he was pretty close to this when he found out about what happened to Donna in Gaza—I wasn't around to see what happened but I do know that no one messes with Donnatella Moss without incurring the wrath of Joshua Lyman and that, without Donna around to keep him sane, Josh is the very definition of a loose cannon. I had missed the signs that Christmas six years ago, too wrapped up in my own dramas and denial, but I wasn't going to let him down again.

"I got it," I said, taking the Blackberry from a terrified and confused kid from earlier whose name I was pretty sure was Otto before going into Josh's office.

"Otto gave you that? What are you scared to face me you little—" Josh said angrily.

"Josh," I said, cutting him off and finding myself acting as the voice of reason, once again.

Josh was jumping he was so hopped up on a dangerous combination of caffeine, exhaustion, and stress. If I accomplished nothing else on this trip to DC I was going to make sure that Josh visited his cardiologist. Or make sure that Donna started getting after him again. The latter would probably be much easier for everyone. "I need that."

"In a minute," I said, slamming down a file on the TV before closing the door. The last thing Josh needed was his staff listening to what I was about to say to him. "I didn't come here because you're such a silver-tongued recruiter or 'cause I got tired of summer in January. Santos may be the future of this country once. For all the partisan noises made on the margin we're a country of centrists and he may just be the right man with the right message at the right time and if he is… I want to be a part of it. But he can't do it without you. Liberal Democrats are going to try to force him left, Moderate Republicans are going to fence-sit as long as they can; you're the one that's got to make this go. Who's gotta to cut through the reflexive demagoguery and timidity and make people do what they were sent here to do. Actually govern. Serve the voters interests… instead of striking poses and playing 'gotcha'. It's going to be next to impossible if you are at your best and, what may only be news to you, you are nowhere near your best. Take the vacation. I haven't said I'm signing on but I can tell you this: I won't stay unless you go. One of us is getting on a plane tonight. If it's you, you're back in a week. If it's me, I'm gone, adios, for good."

I put the blackberry down on top of Josh's plexi-glass cube that housed a baseball autographed by the entire current line-up of the Mets. "Your call," I said before walking out of Josh's office and closing the door, leaving Josh to think about what I had said.

"Is he okay?" the woman who had earlier introduced herself as Ronna asked.

"Honestly I don't know," I admitted.

"Is this… Donna, um… Donna Moss… she told me to look for signs of something… she didn't say why… I've heard rumours, but you never know about how much is truth, if there's any truth at all, in gossip like this," Ronna said.

I wasn't sure if it was the situation or me that was making her so uncomfortable, but for the moment I had bigger problems than a skittish staffer. "I know all about the rumours. Most of them were insane. But, yes, there was some truth to some of them and that's why Donna told you to watch for certain things," I said carefully. If Donna and Josh weren't using the term 'Post Traumatic Stress Disorder' then I wouldn't either.

Ronna nodded slowly. "And… what happened earlier…"

"One of the things Donna needs you to watch for," I nodded. "Do you know how I can reach her? She's the only one who can really deal with him when he's like this."

"Turn around and go to her desk. She just got back from her meeting with Mrs. Santos," Ronna said.

I spun around and smiled when I saw Donna standing at her desk, looking so together and so comfortable in her own skin. "Thanks, Ronna," I said before heading over to Donna. "Hey, stranger."

"Sam!" Donna beamed, dropping her hat, scarf, and gloves on her keyboard and coming around her desk. She wrapped her arms around me, hugging me with all her strength, which is a lot because, as Josh says, she is freakishly strong. "I'm so glad you're here," she said softly before pulling back and looking between me and Josh's office, her eyes filled with a question she didn't want to ask. I nodded and she sighed softly. "You got time for lunch?" she asked.

"I've always got time for you," I replied.

* * *

There was a small café that we all used to go to when everything at the office caved in on us and we needed to escape for an hour or so. It was never that busy, most of their revenue coming from delivery or take-out orders, and no one really cared that we were who we were and that we did what we did. Donna was the one who discovered it, six weeks into our first term when even she couldn't spend another second with Josh.

Which made it a very appropriate place for what we were about to talk about.

"How bad?" Donna asked without preamble after the waitress took our orders.

"As far as I could tell all the windows were intact, but the staff might be planning a revolt. That kid, the writer, is probably scarred for life."

Donna frowned. "He yelled at Otto?"

"_Yelled at_ is a generous term for what Josh did," I said. I hated being the one to tell Donna how far gone Josh really was, but she couldn't help Josh unless she knew the truth, and I was the only one around who knew the signs that Donna needed to look for.

"Was it like Christmas… when he yelled at President Bartlet, or was it a whole new thing?"

I considered the question. "He didn't sound as hopeless as he did that Christmas, but there were some parallels that are, I think, cause for closer inspection of his psyche."

"Is it time to call Stanley?" Donna asked.

"I think it's time for Josh to take a vacation before his head explodes all over the OEOB," I replied.

Donna chuckled bitterly. "We're ten weeks from taking office, we have no VP, at last count we only have two cabinet positions filled, Kazakhstan is driving the President-Elect crazy, CJ has been riding Josh non-stop about reigning Santos in, and there are still about five thousand jobs that need to be filled by the time we move into the White House. He slept, like, two hours after coming back from California, and I'd be amazed if he even got that much between election night and Leo's funeral. You know how Josh gets. He thinks it's his fault that Leo died, that he wouldn't have had that heart attack if he hadn't signed on to the ticket. The fact that no one ever made Leo McGarry do anything he didn't want to hasn't managed to sink through his thick skull yet. Josh isn't going to take eight hours to sleep. There is no way he goes on vacation. Especially not now."

Considering that, I had to agree.

"Not willingly," I said slowly.

"But…?" Donna prodded.

"But there are other ways," I said before explaining my ultimatum.

Donna listened, nodding and alternating between mild amusement and gut—wrenching concern. There were a lot of emotions crossing her face in those few minutes but I could understand how she was feeling.

"So your plan is for you to pressure him professionally while I act like every other bitch of a woman he's ever been attracted to by pushing for what I want using sex as a weapon-slash-bargaining-chip?" Donna asked. I nodded. My plan was actually a lot better than that, more thorough, but that covered the broad strokes pretty well. "First of all, I want you to know that this Sisterhood does not approve of your plan at all."

"Oh, god, the Sisterhood," I groaned. Though I had kept in touch with everyone on a regular basis—a phone call ever few months and an e-mail once in a while is regular, right?—I had been a whole continent away from the Sisterhood for the better part of four years. I was going to have to get used to my comings and goings being approved of or vetoed by them again.

"Also I'm not wild about the idea of pushing Josh to the edge when he's already so obviously running full force at it on his own," Donna continued, ignoring the fact that I had spoken.

Honestly I wasn't wild about that part of the plan, either, but I don't do my best strategizing when I'm desperate and worried. If I want a really good plan I need to be angry, and unfortunately I have no one to direct my anger at because what we're dealing with is self-destruction.

"But you limited our options with your ultimatum so I'll go along with your less than stellar plot," Donna finished.

"Good. Now, I'm going to need a rapid-fire staff briefing before we get back to the office," I said as our food arrived.

* * *

Donna went to work on her part of the non-Sisterhood-sanctioned plan while I trudged back to the OEOB. I had about ten five-minute meetings between one and one-oh-five, a pace that I was no longer accustomed to. Fortunately I didn't have to do much in those meetings—half were introductions to key staff and the other half were people who want to be key staff—and by one-thirty I was rushing to the White House to meet with CJ about Kazakhstan because Josh decided that I might be able to do, and I quote, _'the diplomacy thing' _better than he had been.

The West Wing is constantly changing and there was no reason for me to think that nothing would change in the four years, almost to the day, since I left, but even armed with that knowledge walking into the halls I had spent so many hours in was like walking into a parallel world.

Charlie was in my old office. Will was in Toby's. Carol had spread out to CJ's old office. Margaret, who had always reminded me of Cindy-Lou Who, was sporting a chic new haircut and had a stuffed lamb and many pictures of the baby around her area.

The biggest change, however, was Leo's office—CJ's office.

CJ was in a meeting but Margaret let me into her office to wait. I smiled at Gail—though I knew the fish in the bowl was at least three generations beyond the Gail that Danny had given her—and I examined the pictures that decorated the room for a few minutes before taking a seat on the couch to wait for CJ who, in Margaret's words, _'would be along any minute'_.

I was waiting for about ten minutes when I heard signs of life outside the door. "Margaret, what do I have next?" CJ asked, her voice carrying through the partially open door.

"President-Elect Santos' Deputy Chief of Staff is waiting in your office for a briefing on Kazakhstan," Margaret replied. I smiled. She wasn't giving anything away.

"President-Elect Santos doesn't have a Deputy CoS," CJ said.

"He does now," Margaret said cryptically.

"Just what I need today. A meeting with an over-idealistic politico who wants to change the world and then lead everyone in a couple of verses of 'Kum By Ya'," CJ groaned before pushing the door opened and coming into her office, her eyes glued to a file. "Hello, I'm CJ Cregg."

"We've met, and I've never felt the urge to sing 'Kum By Ya' in my life," I said dryly.

CJ looked up quickly. "Spanky!" she beamed, throwing her file onto her desk and coming over, wrapping me up in a tight hug.

"What have I possibly done to incur the use of the moniker of 'Spanky' this time?"

"Josh got you to come," CJ said happily as we sat down. I noticed that she went out of her way not to sit in Leo's favourite chair, the one that faced away from the window. I wondered if she had ever sat in that chair. "Maybe you can convince the Congressman to get his head out of his ass about Kazakhstan."

It was nice to know I was missed. "It's President-Elect, CJ, and has it not occurred to you that maybe this has all helped rather than hurt matters?"

"What do you mean?" CJ frowned.

"Think about it for a second. Bartlet and Santos are playing geo-political good cop bad cop and its working. Russia and China are closer to an agreement than they've been since this whole debacle started," I said rationally. Every comment that Santos made, every subtle battle the President and the President-Elect had let leak was carefully orchestrated to make Russia and China believe that dealing with Bartlet would be easier than the 'iron fist' of Santos. It was almost brilliant in its simplicity. I could understand why Josh and CJ, not to mention Russia and China, couldn't see what was happening—they were all too close to see that they were all being played. "You starting to see what I'm talking about?" I asked when I saw comprehension flash across CJ's eyes.

"He's been using me!" CJ stated.

"And it was easy until you came back to town, Sam," a familiar voice said from the doorway that connected the Chief of Staff's office to the Oval.

CJ and I got to our feet. "Good afternoon, Mr President," CJ said, her voice as cold as it had been whenever we withheld things from her when she was Press Secretary.

Bartlet nodded to CJ and motioned for us to sit back down while he came in and chose the chair that CJ had so carefully avoided. "When did you get back to town, Sam?" he asked me, as if I was any former employee and he was any former boss.

"This morning," I said.

"Josh convinced him to sign on as Deputy Chief of Staff," CJ put in civilly, though I knew she was angry and probably a little hurt.

"Getting back in the game, huh?" Bartlet asked me.

I shrugged. He still wanted me to run for office, to be President one day, but there was no way I would put Sara through that. Having a relationship while being the guy behind the scenes is hard enough. Having a relationship while being the guy is impossible. I know there are success stories, but the broken marriages far outnumber the lasting ones.

We made small-talk for a few more minutes before CJ got tired of chatting and jumped to the point, asking the President to explain what he was thinking, making such a risky move when dealing with what could easily turn into a nuclear war.

Bartlet filled in some of the details that I had been unable to see while CJ seethed quietly, taking everything in while trying not to burst with outrage that the President had kept her out of the loop. I felt for her. Bartlet never would have kept Leo in the dark. The thing was, though, that CJ was not a great actress and Bartlet needed CJ and Josh to clash over Santos' statements to make it seem less staged. CJ could lie to the press until she was blue in the face, but acting just wasn't her forte. Something that the President didn't factor into his decision was the amount of residual Press Secretary anger that CJ still had that was directed at Josh. I knew she could easily focus her anger over Josh's press blunders—Mary Marsh, the secret plan to fight inflation, the welfare bill, tobacco, not to mention all the rumours about him and Donna that ran rampant through the Beltway over the years—into believable fury over Josh's inability to control the President-Elect. Bartlet, however, was somewhat out of the loop on things like that, Leo having kept him in the dark about a lot of things to make everyone's lives a little easier.

Bartlet nodded to CJ then looked at me with an unnerving stare. "How did you figure it out?" he asked.

After a moment of searching for the right words, I smiled softly. "I can see the whole board."

* * *

The meeting with the President lasted for about ten more minutes, then he left and CJ and a woman named Kate Harper briefed me on what I had come to find out in the first place—number of military personnel being shipped out, potential for escalation, the major players and the minor players that could get things done for us without making too big a splash—which took another ten minutes. It was a lot to take in, and I knew there would be a lot more once Santos took office—as future Deputy Chief of Staff my clearance was iffy at best, and the fact that I hadn't officially signed on yet pretty much gave me the same access as the average newspaper reader—but I absorbed the information, jotting down a few notes where necessary, and I was on my way back to the OEOB well before I had anticipated.

When I got back to 'my office' there was a stack of messages on my desk. I didn't have an assistant yet, the pool having been drained filling in at the White House and with the Transition team, so there were many different people's writing that I had to interpret. Most were predatorily congratulatory calls that I would return eventually, probably after staffing was completed. One was a call from Sara who wanted me to know that she would be flying out for the weekend to start scouting for jobs. I was halfway through glancing at the stack when I saw a message from Josh that made me drop all the other papers.

_**I'm going to Hawaii with Donna tonight. Meet me at four to go over things before talking to President-Elect Santos. Josh.**_

Josh's writing had taken on some of Donna's _'distinctive penmanship'_, and my eyes were sore and dry from the flight and the change of atmosphere between LA and DC, but I was pretty sure that Josh had left me a message to tell me that he was leaving.

To be perfectly honest I didn't think that he would actually do it, which I had been preparing for since I made me ultimatum because I had decided that I wanted to work for Santos but I had boxed myself in by saying that I would leave if he didn't. I had already thought of about ten ways to stay even though I had swore that I was on my way out the door already. At most I thought that Josh would take a long weekend, see his mother or something, and I would work around the clock for two or three days to catch everything up so that Josh wouldn't have the weight of the world on his shoulders when he got back. Also, I had been counting on Donna being around to help me since I didn't know nor trust any of the other people who were doing jobs that most of them didn't fully understand the scope of.

Planning and me have never gotten along that well, and my streak of failed schemes was unblemished.

By four I had managed to convince Ginger to come on as my assistant, providing that, after the first hundred days were over, I gave her two weeks vacation so she could catch her breath, and I had gotten Will's sister, Elsie Snuffin, she of the great name and intelligent jokes, to sign on as an assistant deputy and head of the speechwriters which would help inject some much needed levity to the federal government. Lou ranted and raved for close to an hour in my office about the First Lady taking Donna away, like there was anything I could do about that, and I finished the call-back lists that Josh had handed me when I first arrived after Lou spotted someone who she felt might actually listen to what she had to shout about—I felt nothing but pity for that person.

I had talked to over fifty people that I couldn't stand four years ago and who I could barely remain civil to on the phone with—something that didn't bode well for me when I had to meet with them in person—and I was about to go on to page forty of my call sheet when I noticed that it was time to meet with Josh.

Josh was in his office trying—and failing—to put eye drops in. Josh has a thing about his eyes. The thought of putting contacts in makes him physically ill, and getting him to visit the optometrist is like getting him to pull his fingernails off with pliers. This is why I'm not surprised that half the bottle seems to have dribbled down his cheeks and landed on his shirt, making the white-ish fabric become opaque. As if Josh didn't already put his clothing through hell on a daily basis.

"How many times a day do you try to do that?" I asked once he had gotten a single drop in each eye.

"Five, ten, maybe more," Josh said.

"The instructions say one to two drops up to four times a day," I point out without looking at the bottle. He uses the same brand he has used since before we met and the instructions never change. I look at the bottle he dropped on his desk that looks like the war zone I always knew it would turn into once Donna stopped organizing it several times a day. "Plus these are for moistening contacts, Josh. Didn't you read the box before buying them?"

Josh frowns, squinting to read the label. "Otto picked them up," he said after giving up on reading the small print on the label. "How was your first day back?"

"Rushed. You were serious in your message?" I asked, glancing at the small suitcase sitting in the corner of his office that wasn't there earlier.

Josh nodded. There weren't words to describe how I felt when Josh confirmed that he was going to take off for a week. I really did want to be a part of Santos' legacy, but I knew that Josh would never take a break unless he was forced to. He had come back after being shot a full month before the doctors wanted him to because nothing short of a presidential order would keep him from coming back to the White House—not even Donna's _Rules_ kept him at home—and the President wasn't about to tell Josh to back off when we needed Bartlet's Bulldog back if we were going to have any chance of getting our agenda pushed through.

"Five days, six nights, in Hawaii, then a quick stop in Florida to see my mom before coming back to put out whatever fires have come forth in my absence," Josh said, pushing a folder toward me. The folder contained hotel information, numbers for scuba diving lesions, surfing instructions, volcano tours, and about a hundred other tourist-y things that people do when in Hawaii on vacation. "I'm going to make this work with Donna, Sam. I have to," he said, his voice full of honesty and emotion that I hadn't heard in his voice since he was recovering from the shooting and he was still in the 'happy to be alive' state that had him extolling the virtues of everyone from the Nurse Ratchet-wannabe in the ICU to the goddess that is Donna Moss. Of course, he was pretty doped up at the time, so we all took everything he said with a grain of salt, though none of us disagreed when he started going on about how amazing Donna was. Even his poetic semi-stoned dissertation of the way that everything good in the world was Donnatella Moss fell short.

"Good. Just remember that I love you like a brother, Josh, but you don't deserve her, and if you hurt her I'll kill you myself," I said honestly.

"Leo told me that the Secret Service was on notice to, and I quote, _'dispose of' _me if I were to break Donna's heart," Josh said with a soft smile. He looked at me with questioning eyes. "You're gonna stay, right?"

I nodded and some of the tension that Josh had been carrying around for god knows how long left his body.

We started talking about what my responsibilities would be, both while he was gone and after he got back. He went on for almost ten minutes on how I needed to rein the President-Elect in on Kazakhstan and I was about to tell him what was really happening—Bartlet had told me that, since CJ knew, Josh might as well be let into the loop as well—when Ronna poked her head in and said that the President-Elect had a few minutes if we were ready.

The President Elect entered his office where Josh and I were waiting for him. I had yet to meet Matt Santos and felt more than somewhat awkward about just showing up and announcing that not only had I been hired—Josh and I had agreed that there was no need for him to know about my reticence—but that I would be acting as his Chief of Staff for a week while Josh regained some measure of control over his sanity.

"Sir, uh, this is Sam Seaborn. He'll be covering for me this next week," Josh said. Leave it to Josh to dive in headfirst like that.

To his credit the President Elect didn't look and sound as confused as he could have. "Sorry?"

"Goodwin's doing the Transition, I've set some Senior Staff, Sam knows the players for the rest. In any event none of our candidates are going anywhere; it's not like they're going to take Director of Cabinet affairs jobs in Benelux countries," Josh said. He took a breath and then continued. "Lou will be honing out message plan… um, I yelled at Otto for no reason… I haven't had a vacation in, well, basically, ever… and I will be better prepared to serve you and your presidency not to mention the country if I… unfog my head is…" He took a moment and then got to the point that had, I'm pretty sure, driven it all home for him in the first place. "Sam's getting married."

"Congratulations," Santos said.

"Thank you," I nodded.

Josh took a breath before diving right back in. "Lou's right. I have no life. And I don't know if that's really how I want it or it it's just some borderline or not so borderline pathetic pathologic avoidance thing," Josh said. He paused and then said, "If it's, you know, okay with you."

"If it didn't involve a motorcade I'd drive you to the airport myself," Santos said. I decided right then and there that I liked him, not as a leader because he had yet to actually _lead_, but as a person.

Putting his hands over his heart in thanks Josh relaxed a degree. "Thank you, sir," Josh said before hurrying out of the office. He had a flight to catch and he was determined that he wouldn't miss it.

"Nice to meet you," Santos said to me.

"You too," I said, feeling slightly awkward now that Josh was gone. "Big fan," I added lamely.

Santos smirked. "You've been out of the game for a few years. You ready to hit the ground running?"

"Yes sir," I nodded.

"And you're going to make sure I don't sound like an idiot on Inauguration Day, right?" he asked.

I smiled at that. "Yes sir."

"Good. The people I've already got have _potential_ but, well…" he trailed off.

"Inaugural Addresses aren't the place for potential," I nodded.

"Exactly. I'm going to have enough trouble making the country believe that I can do this job. I don't need to add the image that all I have going for me is potential."

"Well, I think enough of the country believes you're up for the job, sir, seeing as you're here and Arnold Vinick isn't, but you're right in as much as having to convince the half of the country that voted for someone else that everyone who did vote for you did the right thing," I said, hoping I was making sense.

Santos nodded. "You're going to make sure that Josh doesn't implode?" he asked.

"That's always been more Donna's department than anyone else's, but I'm going to give her a hand," I said.

"Good. Now, there are a lot of positions left to fill. My wife is trying to steal my Press Secretary and my Deputy Press Secretary and I'm sure she's going to win—she usually does—and that means that Annabeth Schott and Donna Moss won't be on my staff like I planned. My Chief Council, who I just hired this morning, just told me ten minutes ago that he's decamped to some firm in New York for eight figures and a contract with the Devil himself, so that position needs to be filled again—Josh is pushing for some twenty-something Republican but I don't know if she has the experience for the job."

"Ainsley Hayes?" I asked.

"You know her?"

"We worked in the White House together. She was invaluable during the MS hearings," I said.

I considered Ainsley as Chief Council. It was a little funny—I kept visualizing her carrying a box of doughnuts around like Tribbey did his cricket bat and Babbish did his gavel—but it fit.

"It's a great push for bipartisanship, and once she realized that she doesn't have to be terrified around you she'll give you unadulterated honesty on anything you ask her opinion on—and probably a few things you don't. She isn't a litigator by trade, though, so we'll want to make sure that the Deputies are comfortable in a courtroom."

Santos nodded. "You know anything about the other Deputy that Josh hired? I can't remember his name… it's the same as some movie coroner from the late 1970's."

"Joe Quincy, sir. And I don't know him. Donna is really the person to ask about things like that. I know the players but, as far as I know, Quincy is a lawyer who is a registered Republican. He's not a political operative."

"Alright. You should start staffing your office to help things along. The White House has been pretty much picked clean but there is a file cabinet full of resumes somewhere in this building. Josh started putting out feelers a few weeks before the election so we've got a good base, I think, but a lot of our people are lacking in experience."

"I think anyone who has worked in the White House, including those who worked in the Oval Office, will tell you that ninety percent of what you need to know you'll pick up as you go along," I said honestly.

Donna had told me about how Santos felt guilty when they had to make staffing changes to get more experience during the campaign, and how he promised them all jobs in the Administration, but I knew we were going to need people who had lived through things, not read about them after the fact.

Vitality was great, especially during a campaign, but Administrations need people who know what they're doing. Josh and I know what we're doing, at least as far as domestic matters go—which makes me wonder what the hell we're going to do about the ninety percent of the President's job description that is foreign policy since we're sorely lacking in foreign policy advisors—and, from what I know about her, Lou knows how to spin, which is very high in importance as far as qualities in a Communications Director go, but the others, the speechwriting staff especially, are all ignorant virgins as far as policy goes, not to mention that, with Josh being Chief of Staff, Santos doesn't have anyone in the thick of the battles with Congress and the Senate to tear the heads off unwilling Representatives.

Santos was going to need someone like Josh—only it couldn't be Josh—to be his attack dog. Josh was Bartlet's Bulldog, a nickname that he was thoroughly proud of—one drunken night he wanted to get a bulldog tattooed on his ass, though, thankfully, the guy at the tattoo place refused to 'ink' someone as falling-down drunk as Josh had been—and there was no messing with him. He was ruthless, though he had things that he just didn't do because he wouldn't be Josh if he did them, and Santos is definitely going to need at least one bulldog in the Senior Staff.

"I'm sure that's true. Still, I'd like to get at least one more recognizable Democrat on Senior Staff. There's someone I know who would be perfect, but his name escapes me. It's been bothering me for weeks."

At least one more recognizable Democrat for Senior Staff was a good idea, and would help if I were to find someone to be the bulldog for us, but the fact that Santos was the one telling me this was disconcerting. "Sir, has Josh spoken to you about the things you will and won't have time for?" I asked.

"Several times," Santos chuckled. "Something about Christmas cards and turkey stuffing. I didn't fully understand what he was talking about but he was very adamant that I not obsess over those two things."

"Also carving knives, school board elections, national parks, and pretty much any other obsession you can imagine and probably quite a few you can't," I said.

Santos frowned. "Carving knives?"

"President Bartlet takes carving knives _very_ seriously."

"And yet people have a hard time figuring out why the US government never seems to get anything done," Santos said, rolling his eyes. "I assure you I have no strong feelings about carving knives, municipal elections, or national parks. Besides, I don't think I'll have time for obsessions."

"No one has time for obsessions, sir. They just sort of sneak up on you," I pointed out.

Santos considered that. "Fair point," he conceded. He looked at me for a minute. "You knew Leo, right? I mean, you knew him for a while?"

"Yes, sir," I said, only slightly thrown by the change in subject. It seemed that a lot of people were slipping into thoughts about Leo in the middle of other conversations lately.

"How did you meet him?" Santos asked.

"I met him at a party fundraiser about fifteen years ago, but I didn't get to know him until Josh brought me on to the first Bartlet for America campaign," I said.

Nodding, Santos said, "Do you think anyone can replace him as VP?"

"No, sir," I said firmly. "No one could possibly replace Leo. And we're going to have to make sure that the public, not to mention the people working within the government, know that. But there are people out there who could, conceivably, do as good a job as him, maybe better because Leo was never all that comfortable being the man in the spotlight; he was more at home waiting in the wings dealing with fallout than he ever would have been as Vice President."

"We're leaning toward Baker," Santos said.

I cringed internally. Baker and I had never gotten along and the thought of having to work with him so closely was not at all a comforting thought. Though it was probably how Josh felt when Hoynes signed on as VP for Bartlet—their relationship never recovered from Josh leaving. But Baker was better than Russell—what a putz—and at least he had the intelligence and tact to interact with dignitaries.

"Carol Gelsey is number two on the short list. Amy Gardner is pushing for her hard," Santos said. I was not at all surprised that Amy was shilling for Gelsey. I was, however, surprised that what she was pushing had any real value. Last I heard Amy was, yet again, between jobs.

"Both are strong candidates," I said, though I wasn't sure I could see either of them assuming the Presidency if it came to that, which, let's face it, in the political and social climate we were in wasn't out of the realm of possibilities.

"Anyway, I'm going to need you to do a lot of the VP selection things if Josh is going to take a vacation. Donna can help you—assuming my wife hasn't already poached her."

Mentally damning Josh for not mentioning that Donna was going with him, I reluctantly filled Santos in on the fact that Donna was going to be unreachable for the next week. I also told him that she had taken the job with the Future First Lady.

Santos wasn't pleased. "Anyone else planning on bailing on me?" he asked after uttering some rather obscure curses in Spanish under his breath. I doubted he knew of my fluency in Spanish. Even if he did know my background he probably wouldn't have known that I spent most of my childhood learning Spanish from the woman who came in four days a week to clean and manage the house. I took French and Latin in high school, one Latin course in college, and, while I contemplated taking Spanish for the easy A, I never did. My GPA was good enough without it and I've never been the type to take the easy road.

"Not that I'm aware of, sir."

"Alright. Go start doing what you're here to do," Santos said, already calm again.

"Thank you, sir," I said before slipping out of his office.

Ronna picked up a note and held it out to me. "Josh said to give this to you. I didn't understand his message, though. He said that Donna talked him into what he didn't want to do and that you would need to know. Is he always going to be this cryptic?" she asked with a frown.

"Probably. You start to catch on after a while," I said.

"How long did it take you?" Ronna asked.

"About six months, but we were roommates at the time so we were around each other a lot. The average is about a year, though it's been known to happen in as little as two minutes."

"Who managed that?"

"Donna," I said with a smile.

"Ah," Ronna said, smiling as well. "Well, here you go," she said, giving me the message slip. "You know what he means?"

I read it over and nodded. "Thanks, Ronna."

"No problem, Mr. Seaborn," Ronna called as I started heading down the hall. Upon hearing that I cringed and turned back. Not being 'Mr. Seaborn' all the time was one of the good things about leaving the private sector. It had been high on the list of PROs on my PRO/CON list.

"It's going to be a long term if you don't call me Sam," I said.

Ronna smiled. "Alright, Mr. Seab—Sam," she said.

I went back to my temporary office and worked on vetting for another hour before finding Ronna and telling her that I was taking off for a little while. She wrote down my cell phone number, and my pager number as well, and then reminded me that I had to run the staff meeting at eight—another thing Josh had pawned off on me. If I hadn't mostly forced him into taking a vacation I would have been a lot angrier at Josh for leaving me with so much work, but as it was I couldn't really get mad at him since it had been my idea and my ultimatum—as well as Donna's—that led to him booking a flight for two to somewhere tropical.

Josh was attempting to pack when I got to his place. When I knocked he yelled that the door was open, not caring that he had buzzed me into the building and invited me in without making sure it was me he was letting in. It was a very Josh habit of his that would have to be broken once Santos took office. Like CJ, Josh was going to have a Secret Service detail since the US had extensive military operations going on.

"Does toothpaste expire?" Josh asked as he hurried past me, coming out of his bedroom and heading for the couch where he had a large black suitcase waiting.

"What the hell?" I frowned.

The question was classic off-the-wall Josh, and I was pretty sure he'd asked me the same thing a couple of times before. That wasn't what threw me. What had me standing in the middle of his entryway with what I'm sure was not a flattering look on my face was his outfit. Tan cargo shorts that were obviously purchased before the Santos campaign started because they were too big for his new starvation-diet waist-size, leather sandals that I made a mental note of so I could mock him for them later—it was November in DC and he was wearing leather Birkenstocks—and a flowery-print button-down shirt that I really hoped he hadn't bought for his aborted trip to Tahiti with Amy Gardner.

Of course, his ensemble aside, the thing that struck me most about Josh was the jittering.

His whole body was jittering, like normal people did when they had too much caffeine—I was thinking that Josh hadn't had enough caffeine and his system was revolting. "I've been on the road. I used the last of the stuff in my kit and I don't have time to go to the store," Josh said, holding up a rather dirty tube of toothpaste.

"Toss it. Buy some when you get there," I advised, not so much because of the expiration question as much as the grime that covered the tube in his hand. I didn't even want to think about what the rest of his bathroom looked like. Josh had a history of questionable habits for the state of his condo while he was on the road.

During the first Bartlet for America campaign Josh had left DC on a whim, coming to see me and then going to Nashua, and, without serving any notice with Hoynes, he started campaigning for Bartlet after the speech at the VFW hall that night. He had a friend pack some clothes and ship them to him in New Hampshire but he had neglected to ask that friend—or the friend hadn't bothered—to clean out his fridge. When we were all in DC for an event after Bartlet had won the nomination CJ, Donna, Josh and I went to Josh's place because we were all sick of hotels and he was the only one who had kept a residence in the District. The smell that greeted us was nauseating, and the things that were growing out of the things that we assumed had once been food looked like high school science fair offerings that had gone Grade-Z horror movie. Needless to say we ended up at the hotel with Leo, the Bartlet family, and Toby and Andie—who hadn't been challenged at all in that election—and Josh hired a team of crime scene clean up people to deal with his apartment. The fridge was thrown out and he had needed to get a new coffee maker—he'd left coffee grounds in the filter area and the mould had spread through the entire machine—but what had really surprised everyone, even the clean up guys, was the fact that his bathroom looked like the floor in the kitchen area of a fast food restaurant. An eighth of an inch of grease, Josh had reported once it was all cleaned and the tile was white again, as if amassing that much grease in a traditionally non-greasy room was an accomplishment to brag about.

I'm positive the same thing would have happened again on Bartlet for America Two if Donna hadn't taken over his life the moment he hired her—or she hired herself.

Josh and Donna's estrangement prior to the Santos campaign was evident in the state of Josh's apartment. It wasn't quite as bad as that day on the first BFA campaign, but the improvement was, fortunately, olfactory.

I, like everyone else in the known universe, assumed that if Josh and Donna were to leave the White House they would do it together and, before long, she would move in with Josh or they would find a place of their own—one where Mandy and Amy hadn't screwed Josh while screwing Josh. I figured that, were I to see the inside of Josh's apartment after he left the White House, I would see the _woman's touch_; things that were quintessentially Donna Moss.

Other than a file covered in her handwriting that sat on the arm of the sofa there was nothing more 'Donna' about Josh's home than the last time I'd been there. Actually, there was less of Donna now, which was strange considering they were vacationing together now, but when I thought about how they hadn't even really spoken for nine months before she joined the campaign and how Josh hadn't been home during the campaign I realized that Josh probably got rid of all of the Donna-isms that were in his apartment after she quit and she hadn't been around enough to infiltrate his living room, bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, and closets yet.

The lack of definition in their relationship probably accounted for some of the lack of traces of Donna, I was sure, but that didn't make it seem any less unnatural.

"In fact," I continued, "you should just buy a lot of things when you get there. You said somewhere tropical, which means you're going to need a bathing suit. Other than that time you were so drunk that you thought you were on fire I have never seen you swim—you didn't even swim that time, you just sort of flopped around in the tidal pool—so a bathing suit, as well as sandals of some kind should go on your list."

"I'd already thought about that," Josh said proudly. I looked at him, eyebrow arched sceptically. "Okay, Donna thought about that, but I did think about making a list before she told me to buy a bathing suit. I even had some things on it."

He round a pad of paper and handed it to me before disappearing into his bedroom. I read over his list. Other than _'bathing suit'_ and _'sandals'_ Josh also had _'sun block'_, _'beach towels'_, _'some kind of sun hat thing'_ and _'disposable cameras X 4'_. I assumed the cameras, or at least the specific number, were also Donna's suggestion.

I added _'toothpaste'_ to his list and, as an afterthought, I scribbled _'condoms'_, just in case he hadn't thought to pack any that hadn't expired.

Josh came back into the living room with a bunch of clothes that he dumped into the suitcase before tossing a couple of books on top and zipping it up. If he had more time I would have insisted he fold everything, not only because it was going to make all his clothes wrinkly but also because it was going to drive Donna crazy, but there was no time for that. Donna was just going to have to deal with that facet of Josh when they got where they were going.

Which I still didn't know the exact location of.

Josh would only tell me was 'Hawaii'.

Hawaii is made up of approximately 137 islands, including the eight 'big islands', the 11 'north-western islands', and the 19 islands and atolls, not to mention the islets and seamounts.

"You've dealt with your fridge?" I asked as Josh started going around to make sure that the windows and doors were locked and the lights were out. I took that time to check his backpack to make sure he wasn't taking any work with him.

"That was easy this time. I haven't been grocery shopping since I was still at the White House," Josh replied with a smirk once he returned to the living room. He shouldered his backpack that contained a book, some gum, his pager that was for emergencies only, and a couple of spiral notebooks and pens.

Josh stopped at the front door. "You think she'll actually come?" he asked, sounding incredibly vulnerable.

Since day one I've been worried about Josh hurting Donna; we were all worried about that, actually. I knew early on that her feelings for him were genuine, deep and true. I also knew early on that Josh was attracted to Donna and that he got jealous when she dated other men—though he vehemently denied feeling any kind of jealousy, instead confessing that he did everything in his power to sabotage her dates and declaring that her relationships weren't going to go anywhere simply because he said so—but it wasn't until he called me from Germany that I knew he loved her as deeply as she loved him. Ever since that tearful phone call I've been worried about Donna hurting Josh. Because somewhere along the way Donna worked herself so deeply into Josh's heart that I think it would quite literally kill him if she were to leave him. And not quickly, either. It would be a slow, painful death, and there would be nothing anyone could do except watch Josh suffer.

Thankfully I know that Donna wants to make their relationship work as much as Josh does, so I don't allow myself to worry.

"She'll be there, Josh," I promised. I had spoken to Donna while I was on my way over to Josh's place and, other than being a little bit frustrated with the short time Josh had given her to get things ready to leave, she was thrilled by the thought of going on vacation with Josh. "You're finally taking her to Hawaii, after all," I added with a reassuring pat on the back.

Josh nodded. "Right," he said softly. He looked at me. "I love her, Sam. In all the crazy ways that make me want to do things like… like buy her a house or… I don't even know what."

"Take a vacation while the President-Elect is trying to both change and save the world at the same time?" I offered as I pushed him out the door and locked it behind us.

"Exactly," Josh nodded. He sighed heavily. "I don't know what I'll do if I screw this up," he confessed.

"Josh, you'd have to try pretty hard to screw things up with Donna. Just remember that she's not your assistant, she's the woman you love, and you'll be fine."

"Easier said than done. I spent the better part of the last decade trying to do the exact opposite," Josh groaned.

"Then this should be easy. You won't have to work at feeling what you should be feeling," I said as I steered Josh down to the car I had rented when I arrived in DC. I don't think Josh really followed the wording of my encouragement, but I'm almost positive he understood the sentiment behind them, which is all that mattered. Josh stopped worrying about Donna not showing up—though I was regretting advising him to give her ticket to her, even if it did give them both an extra half hour to get ready to leave—and he even managed to stop worrying about screwing up his relationship with Donna.

Or, at least he stopped vocalizing his worries.

To be perfectly honest, that was good enough for me.

On the ride to the airport Josh made sure I knew the names of the people he wanted in the Cabinet and the people Santos wanted but who would only cause problems for us. As if I didn't already know everything he was telling me. He was the guy who told the next President of the United States that I knew the players and would be fully capable of handling the Transition for a week in his absence.

I let him ramble until I parked the car and then, after cutting the engine, I looked over at my best friend and said, "Josh, I know everything you're telling me. California isn't Mars. I read the papers, I watch the shows, and other than not having to do spin after someone in the media rails against the President, my life hasn't changed all that much since I was working in the White House. I certainly haven't changed that much. So relax, trust me, and remember that there are only two reasons I will accept a call from you."

"What are the reasons?" Josh asked wearily.

"One is if you or Donna is hurt in some way. I don't mean a stubbed toe or a paper cut. I'm saying if Donna manages to talk you into going anywhere near the water and you trip over the sand in a way that only you could and you end up with a broken ankle, I want a call. But it better be a legitimate injury or I'm hanging up on you and the moment you get back to DC I'm on a flight to California."

Josh nodded slowly. "Legitimate injury. Got it. Though I protest to the implication that I would break my ankle on sand."

"Apparently you don't remember that time when you broke your wrist opening the fridge," I frowned.

"That doesn't count. The damn fridge tipped over and practically crushed me. The doctor said I was lucky stuff didn't shatter in there," Josh said, cradling his left wrist against his chest as we both got out of the car. It was fourteen years ago and yet his expression is exactly the same as it was before the painkillers kicked in.

"What's the other reason?" Josh asked as he hauled his suitcase out of the trunk.

I knew it might be jumping the gun and there was every chance that my comment would freak Josh out completely, but I was banking on Josh being as aware of his love for Donna as everyone else had been for years. "If you start shopping for a ring, I want to know," I said.

Josh slammed the trunk shit before lining me up with a serious stare. "I've had the ring since Gaza," he said before reaching into a pocket in his backpack—one that I figured was too small to fit any work into so I hadn't bothered to check—and pulling out a small velvet case. He tossed it to me and I caught it instinctively.

This stunned me. Josh had never been the plan-ahead type. The only thing that he had ever planned on was working in the White House one day. But Josh had always had a different set of rules when it came to Donnatella Moss.

While I was processing the fact that Josh had bought a ring and was planning on proposing to Donna and had actually packed the ring—or maybe he always carried it with him, which seemed like a very 'Josh' thing to do—to take with him to Hawaii, Josh had made it to the automatic doors of the airport. I ran after him, clutching the ring box in my hand as tightly as I had Sara's the night I proposed to her. "You've had a ring for over two years and you haven't asked her yet?" I asked when I caught up with Josh. He was fairly easy to spot, even in the crowd. His Hawaiian-print shirt wasn't as garish as most, but almost everyone else was wearing overcoats to stave off the late-November cold.

"By the time she got back from Germany things were crazy with the peace talks and Leo…" Josh said, trailing off as memories of Leo overtook him. It took Josh a moment to pull himself together. "We started drifting apart after she came home. It was a lot of things, but one of the big things that happened was that she wanted me to help her advance her career and I couldn't make her see that I barely had enough power to keep my own afloat. Not to mention that I knew that without her I didn't have a chance at keeping my head above water. And then she left, and I left and…"

"And you got a man elected President at the expense of your personal life. I've been there," I said, nodding. I really wanted to look at the ring that Josh had chosen, but there was something inside me that wanted to wait, to see it for the first time on Donna's finger. In the end that desire won out and I pressed the small box back into Josh's hand. "Just promise me you won't rush anything. Things are good now, though you two obviously have a lot to talk about, but the last thing your relationship needs at the moment is pressure. If it feels right, ask her—and I mean actually ask her, don't just assume that she'll say yes—but if it doesn't feel right, don't ask. If the past nine years has proved anything its that she's not going anywhere."

Josh nodded. "I promise. And I promise about the phone call thing, too. It's not gonna be easy," he said as we neared the doors that signalled the end of the line for me. At the same moment Josh and I both noticed a tall brunette standing by the wall with a Secret Service agent guarding her and the rolling suitcase she had resting by her feet. "CJ's here. That must mean Donna made it," Josh said with a sigh of relief. I knew he was still worried, even if he wasn't saying anything about it. "I don't see her," he frowned as he looked around, craning his neck like a maniac as he searched for his beloved Donna.

"Mi amore!" CJ said happily, reaching her arms out and pulling Josh into a tight embrace. From the way Josh and CJ have been acting I got the impression that they hadn't exactly been close since he left the White House, maybe even since she was named Chief of Staff when he was the Deputy Chief of Staff and it would have been more logical to promote him. Though, I have to say, I did enjoy watching Toby doing the briefings. "She's in the bathroom," CJ said reassuringly when Josh didn't stop his manic craning of the neck routine.

"Thanks for driving us, guys. The cost of long-term parking is almost as much as the flight and we're just lowly government employees," Josh said to both CJ and myself.

CJ rolled her eyes. "Chiefs of staff to the next President and First Lady of the United States. Hardly lowly positions," she said. "Hey, Spanky, Ginger wanted me to tell you that she'll take it without the two week thing, but that she expects time off for her birthday."

"Take what?" Josh asked.

"I offered Ginger the position of Deputy Deputy Chief of Staff," I said.

Josh frowned. "No one other than Donna is allowed that title," he said indignantly.

CJ and I shared a look. The sooner he got on that plane the better. "Josh, why don't you go on through? It might be easier to get your seat comfortable before the rest of your row gets there and starts taking up space," CJ said diplomatically.

Josh cast a hesitant look in the direction of the washrooms and then reluctantly nodded. He hugged CJ again and reaffirmed his promises to me and then he disappeared through the doors that would take him through security and on to his gate. The moment after he was out of sight I suddenly remember another promise that I wanted him to make, but I knew that if it came to that I'd have nine months to make sure that none of his children ever call me 'Uncle Sam'. After we got engaged Sara got a phone call from her younger brother saying that she was going to be an aunt, news that, after a brief reaffirmation that we would have a family after we got married, led to a long conversation about the fallout of her niece or nephew calling me 'Uncle Sam'.

"How bad was he? About not bringing work with him, I mean?" CJ asked, shaking me from my thoughts of fear at the notion of being called 'Uncle Sam'.

"Not bad. I checked his backpack. All he's got in there is his pager, which we agreed he could bring, and some empty notebooks. I expect they'll be filled with notes and whatnot by the time they land, but at least it'll keep him out of Donna's hair on the flight," I said. "How's Donna doing?"

"She's tired, worried about Josh, eager to start work," CJ said.

"Basically she's Donna," I said.

CJ nodded. "Yep." Her eyes latched on to a blonde head bobbing and weaving toward us. "Speak of the devil," CJ said as Donna emerged from the crowd with her overcoat thrown over her arm.

"How is it that you look amazingly relaxed before you even start your vacation?" I asked. I had been back in DC for less than twenty-four hours and already I was feeling the familiar weight of the world pressing down upon me.

It was strangely comforting.

I decided not to spend any time worrying about what was wrong with me. That was a subject for another day… and possibly a qualified psychiatric professional.

"Because, Samuel, Josh is finally taking me to Hawaii," Donna said happily. "Where is he?" she asked, doing the same crazy neck-craning thing that Josh was doing only minutes earlier.

I couldn't help it. I started laughing. CJ joined me in my laughter a split second later. I'm pretty sure that even CJ's Secret Service detail found the situation amusing.

However, Donna looked stricken, which took the funny right out of the situation. "We sent him ahead. I figured it would be easier for him to find a way to make those stupid civilian airplane seats comfortable for his back if he wasn't surrounded by tourists and whatnot," CJ said, waving her hand dismissively. "Now, you've got everything you need?" she asked, sounding an awful lot like a worried mother sending her firstborn off to sleep-away camp for the first time.

"Yep," Donna nodded. "Well, no, actually I don't. Four hours isn't really enough time to pack for this kind of thing, especially when my apartment is still under the control of the borderline paranoid woman from Treasury, and November in DC isn't exactly prime time to find a bathing suit and things like that, but I figure I can get what I don't have already once we get there," she said, talking faster than normal. "Anyway, I should go," she continued, taking her rolling suitcase away from CJ.

Donna kissed both of us on the cheek and promised to call when they got in—there were no phone restrictions on Donna, though she knew Josh wasn't allowed to call anyone other than his mother and, in certain circumstances, me—and then she disappeared through the doors as well.

"So… they're off," CJ said lamely.

I nodded and, without a word, CJ and I headed out of the building.

"Before, with the President… what was that about, the seeing the whole board thing?" CJ asked as we left the airport. She and I—and her Secret Service protection—were going to get something to eat, both of us hoping that our cell phones wouldn't go off in the middle of the meal.

I handed the keys to the rental over to CJ's driver. He was going to drive my car to the restaurant while CJ's agent drove her car with the two of us in the back so that we would both have vehicles at the restaurant and I wouldn't have to pay for more parking time than I needed to. It was a thoroughly complex system that had taken Margaret and the Secret Service half an hour to figure out and I wasn't about to mess with it. For all I knew Margaret had gotten NATO commanders involved and I wasn't exactly in a good position to piss them off.

"Remember when Bartlet came back from India with all those chess sets from the Prime Minister?" I asked.

"Of course. The FAA didn't want to let us take off until they were placed all along the length of Air Force One because they were making the plane _list_ or something," CJ replied.

CJ had complained for two hours about the wait to take off when she had gotten back from India. She claimed that that flight was worse than the one home from Stockholm in Bartlet's second year in office. Apparently the history of chess was worse than listening to the history of the Fjords while suffering from a head cold not made better by a trans-Atlantic flight. Of course, CJ didn't threaten to dress the President up in lederhosen and drop-kick him into a Fjord after India, so I was always pretty sure that the Stockholm trip was worse, but, seeing as I wasn't there for either trip I never voiced my opinion on the matter.

"Well, he gave me one. A Lotus Set in hand-carved camel bone, to be exact. He said it was a thank you for the State of the Union," I said. "He asked me to play, which was a terrifying experience in and of itself, but he was also dealing with China and Taiwan."

"The Patriots?" CJ asked.

I nodded. "He kept telling me to '_see the whole board'_. He said that over and over, leaving every few minutes to play against Toby or go to the Sit Room, which gave me time to think. He kicked my ass, of course, but… okay, this is going to sound incredibly cheesy, but he opened my mind. Ever since I've been looking at everything differently."

"He's never asked me to play chess," CJ admitted.

CJ's comment made me remember something President Bartlet used to say about 'new people'. He didn't like new people, didn't trust new people, and had little patience for new people most of the time. It wasn't until the Illinois primary that Bartlet started accepting Josh and CJ and Toby and me as his staff, and he didn't remember our names until the Convention. But, even if he had known a person for years Bartlet maintained that he didn't really know anyone until he had played chess with them. For example, Oliver Babish's kids grew up with Liz and Ellie, his oldest babysat for Zoey and, later, Annie. Babish and the President built hospitals together—at least, that was what I'd heard, though something told me that that meant they had written checks to foundations and stayed on the business side of things rather than that they had put hammer to nail. All of Babish's wives had been friends with Abbey, though Abbey never got along all that well with Babish himself, especially once they started meeting all the time during the MS disclosure and its aftermath. But, despite years of knowing each other, Bartlet always said that they didn't really know each other because they had never played against each other in a game of chess.

Obviously hearing that wouldn't cheer CJ up, so I opted to keep that particular memory to myself for the moment.

We're both quiet for a few minutes before CJ says, "So, you, Josh, and Donna are going to be running the free world. Maybe it's time to invest in a bunker. You know, like the one under the barn in Manchester." We both cringe, remembering the wall-shaking screaming matches between Abbey, Bartlet, and Ron Butterfield about digging up half the farm in Manchester to put in the Presidential bunker and war room. Of course, those were merely squabbles over who was supposed to load the dishwasher compared to the battles that were waged over the Secret Service 'improvements' that were visible from above ground.

"Somehow I don't think your landlord would approve," I commented.

"I probably won't be living there come February," CJ said.

"You're not gonna stick around and see how badly Josh and I screw up?"

CJ shrugged. "Katie, Steve, Chris, and Mark are still in the press room, not to mention all the others. I'll know about your screw-ups regardless. I'm just… sick of DC politics," she confessed. "This was never my dream. I… I wanted to change the world, make it just a little bit better. But there's isn't exactly a section for that in the want ads and volunteerism is great but it doesn't pay the bills. I find a firm but I end up assigned to the entertainment section which, sure, pays well, but I'm out there trying to sell fifteen movies about dogs and forty movies about cheerleaders and a couple dozen about serial killers and then they come back at me with complaints because they're not getting nominations for whatever award show is around the next corner. Then Toby shows up and says that Bartlet wants me, even though he's never heard of me, and then he says Leo wants me which I believed even though it turned out that Leo had never heard of me, either, and it was just supposed to be about keeping Hoynes honest and putting some important issues out there but eight years later I'm Chief of Staff and Leo's dead and Toby's facing prison and Josh and I are barely speaking and Donna and I still have weirdness from when I stuck my nose where it didn't belong and made her sleep with a photojournalist and I didn't even know what firm you are working for let alone that you got engaged…" she ranted before trailing off with a sigh. "This isn't what was supposed to happen," she said after a minute.

I chuckled bitterly. "Tell me about it. I was perfectly happy being a corporate lawyer and then Josh came along."

"You were perfectly _miserable_ being a corporate lawyer and you know it," CJ said.

"Okay, fine, I was miserable," I allow, "but I had a plan. I was going to make partner which would allow me to be able to actually pay for the wedding Lisa and her mother had planned for us and we were going to live a long and wealthy life together." I paused for a moment. "Of course, if Josh hadn't dragged me into the arena of Presidential politics I never would have ended up meeting Sara, so I guess that balances the scales."

CJ grinned. "Tell me about Sara."

I smiled and, in that moment, I knew that coming back to DC and to Presidential politics was the right move.


End file.
